UPSC Monday Seminarseries 2023

9:00 Felix Robert Barbut

Title: Plant xylan engineering and its implications for drought adaptation

Supervisor: Ewa Mellerowicz

9:30 Zhi-Qiang Chen

Title: How will Norway spruce respond to climate?

Supervisor: Harry Wu


Place: Lilla hörsalen KB.E3.01
Time: 9:00-10:00

Contact: Maria Israelsson Nordström, Anne Honsel

Seminar series

"Outside of Academia": #3 Industry in Umeå - Arevo

Do you want to know which career paths are waiting for you outside academia?
The speaker of this seminar will be Regina Gratz from Arevo.

Contact:

For questions, please contact the organisers Laura Tünnermann (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Tinkara Bizjak (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Welcome to the second kick-off event for the national SciLifeLab site – now hosted by Umeå!

SciLifeLab has launched four new sites across Sweden in 2022. The sites, located in Gothenburg, Linköping, Lund, and Umeå, will be crucial in promoting scientific research and research infrastructure nationally, while also strengthening the collaboration between all Swedish universities. Throughout this year, each site arrange a whole day program to highlight the national and local perspectives of SciLifeLab. 

Learn more about the services and infrastructure development, research highlights, and activities offered by SciLifeLab, both nationally and locally; interact with the SciLifeLab capabilities - Precision Medicine, Pandemic Laboratory Preparedness and Planetary Biology, and much more! Site Umeå cordially invite the research community of Umeå and beyond to join, network, and celebrate together the Umeå site inauguration!

More information: https://www.scilifelab.se/event/scilifelab-day-umea/

Link to the registration

UPSC Monday Seminarseries 2023

9:00 Haleh Hayatgheibi

Title: Effect of population structure on the quantatative genetic trade-off between growth and wood properties in Norway spruce and its implications for tree improvement programs

Supervisor: Rosario García Gil

9:30 Maxime Chantreau

Title: Screening of nitrogen use efficiency in the SwAsp population

Supervisor: Hannele Tuominen


Place: Lilla hörsalen KB.E3.01
Time: 9:00-10:00

Contact: Maria Israelsson Nordström, Anne Honsel

Master thesis presentation 2023

9:00 Carina Lubrecht

Title: Metatranscriptomic analysis of short-term nitrogen fertilization of Scots pine

Supervisor: Nathaniel Street

UPSC Monday Seminarseries 2023

9:00 Abu Imran Baba

Title: Role of RG-11 dimerization in cell adhesion of Arabidopsis and insights into the fiber cell intrusive growth in poplar

Supervisor: Stéphane Verger

9:30 Muhammad Shahzad Anjam

Title: Strengthening localized root immune responses: the mechanisms of lignin deposition

Supervisor: Peter Marhavý


Place: Lilla hörsalen KB.E3.01
Time: 9:00-10:00

Contact: Maria Israelsson Nordström, Anne Honsel

UPSC PhD Half-time Seminar Day

Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, SLU

10:00 Laura Tünnermann (SLU)
Title: Molecular mechanisms underpinning plant nitrogen uptake
External evaluator: Doris Rentsch, Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Supervisor: Torgny Näsholm

11:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00 Léa Bogdziewiez (SLU)
Title: Single-cell mechanical charcterization of cell-cell adhesion in plants
External evaluator: Edouard Pesquet, Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm
Supervisor: Stéphane Verger

14:00 Sara Häggström (UmU)
Title: Target of Rapamycin (TOR) mediates translational regulation in Arabidopsis
External evaluator: Anders Hafrén, Department of Plant Biology Sciences, SLU, Uppsala
Supervisor: Johannes Hanson

15:00-15:15 Short break

15:15 Adam Klingberg (SLU)
Title: Integrating genomics in tree breeding
External evaluator: Xiao-Ru Wang, Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University
Supervisor: Harry Wu

16:15 End of PhD Half-time Seminar Day

Contact:
Stefan Jansson, UmU
Hannele Tuominen, SLU

UPSC Seminar

Edouard Pesquet
Associate Professor at Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Title: Unravelling the functions behind differences in lignin chemistry between cell types for plant development and environmental resiliance

Host: Stéphane Verger

Abstract
The biopolymer lignin, deposited in the cell walls of vascular cells, is essential for plant long-distance water conduction, structural support and resistance to biotic and abiotic constraints. Independently of the plant species, the cell wall layers of each vascular cell type contain specific lignin chemistries differing in aromatic substitutions and aliphatic functions. Yet, both the spatial control and the biological function of this conserved and specific lignin chemistry for the cell wall layers of each vascular cell type remain unclear. This lack of clarity is due to our current methodologies for analyzing lignin mainly restricted to ground or ball-milled samples that averages out the spatial and developmental differences between each cell type. We thus optimized in situ quantitative chemical imaging methods to determine changes in lignin structure, concentration and/or composition at subcellular levels in whole plant biopsies using direct methods such as Raman spectroscopy, UV fluorescence and histochemistry [1-4]. We combined functional genetics, using a collection of mutants in Arabidopsis and poplar, with in situ quantitative chemical imaging to unravel the molecular mechanisms controlling the spatial accumulation of specific lignin chemistries in distinct cell types and its impact on each cellular function. We found that specific lignin chemistries accumulated dynamically and differently during the maturation of each cell type and morphotype, changing the concentration and composition of their lignin [5]. We found that lignin spatial accumulation in each cell type and cell wall layer depended on different paralog combination of phenol oxidizing enzymes exhibiting substrate specificities [6-7]. We lastly showed using multivariate analyses that modifying this specific lignin chemistry impaired the cell wall biomechanics of each cell type and morphotype, and consequently plant growth and its response to abiotic constraints [5-6]. Altogether, we show that lignin chemistry is differently controlled for each cell type and morphotype during their maturation to dynamically adjust their function in response to developmental and environmental constraints.

References
[1] Decou R, Serk H, Ménard D, Pesquet E. Methods Mol. Biol. 1544, 233-247, 2017.
[2] Blaschek L, Champagne A, Dimotakis C, Nuoendagula, Decou R, Hishiyama S, Kratzer S, Kajita S, Pesquet E. Front Plant Sci. 11, 109, 2020.
[3] Blaschek L, Nuoendagula, Bacsik Z, Kajita S, Pesquet E. ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 8, 4900–4909, 2020.
[4] Yamamoto M, Blaschek L, Subbotina E, Kajita S, Pesquet E. ChemSusChem. 13, 4400-4408, 2020.
[5] Ménard D, Blaschek L, Kriechbaum K, Lee CC, Serk H, Lyubartsev A, Bacsik Z, Bergström L, Mathew A, Kajita S, Pesquet E. The Plant Cell 34, 4877-96, 2022.
[6] Blaschek L, Murozuka E, Ménard D, Pesquet E. The Plant Cell 35, 889-909, 2023.
[7] Blaschek L, Pesquet E. Front Plant Sci. 12,754601, 2021.

Are you new at UPSC?

We invite every newcomer at UPSC to participate in the Welcome Meeting. This meeting will be held twice per semester, four times per year and gives you important information about UPSC, how it is organised, who are your contact persons and will help you to find your way around at UPSC.

Please make sure to attend at least one meeting after your arrival at UPSC. We will serve fika for everyone participating.

We are looking forward to meeting you!

Johannes Hanson (Head of Department, UMU), Totte Niittylä (Head of Department, SLU), Ove Nilsson (Director of UPSC)

UPSC Cutting-Edge Seminar

Arthur Gessler
Director of the Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research (LWF), Group Leader Forest Growth and Climate, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Adjunct Professor ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Title: New approaches for monitoring forest functioning in a changing climate - crossing scales from molecular mechanisms to stand wide processes

Host: Totte Niittylä

UPSC Monday Seminarseries 2023

9:00 tba

Title: tba 

Supervisor: tba 

9:30 tba 

Title: tba 

Supervisor: tba 


Place: Lilla hörsalen KB.E3.01
Time: 9:00-10:00

Contact: Maria Israelsson Nordström, Anne Honsel

PhD 101: Everything is hard before it gets easy

27 - 29 September 2023 Lund, Sweden

More information: http://sppsphd2023.org

PhD 101: Everything is hard before it gets easy

27 - 29 September 2023 Lund, Sweden

More information: http://sppsphd2023.org

PhD 101: Everything is hard before it gets easy

27 - 29 September 2023 Lund, Sweden

More information: http://sppsphd2023.org